Old Words Week
I’ve spent the last few days transcribing the contents of my Brown Notebook, in an attempt to resurrect my creative process. For those that don’t know, this is where I keep all the story ideas that I “don’t have time for right now,” specifically those I started while working on my drafts for my novel series.
As of a few minutes ago, I’ve now extracted eight such ideas, all of which I started in late 2008 early 2009. I know this, because the notes I took in April 2009 when I was interviewing at NCSoft for a contract writing gig are the next things in my notebook.
I’m not going to lie, there’s some fantastic stuff so far in my Brown Notebook, including a short horror piece I think I’ll work on as my next project. Unfortunately, six of the other seven are all novel-length pieces, and if you’ll note today’s date you may begin to understand the depths of my dilemma.
The last two entries in the book (or the latest, depending on your personal water glass philosophy) are from last year, a creative jag started just after I returned from a writer’s conference. So there’s a good three years of stuff in that book that I’ve yet to approach. I happen to know that a big chunk of that is stuff from my science fiction novel-in-progress, but there’s also the short story in there that inspired the longer piece, and what became my Happy Family Torturer story (hopefully coming to a magazine near you someday).
What I’ve noticed from the transcription, and inevitable enhancement of the text, is that I’ve got some really strong associations to the characters. When I start a story, I see the entire thing in my mind, whether I can articulate it or not. When I write it out, I get to find out not how it ends, but how it happens, and to whom.
As I type this, I have an intense sense of the failed mystery writer whose “new” book embroils him in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an unknown killer and the police investigating his crimes.
Of the time-traveling cop chasing a serial killer “down-time,” and his confusion as memories come to him in bits and pieces as he assimilates the life he’s been living in someone else’s body…
Of the telepresence spy desperately trying to learn orbital mechanics before it’s too late…
Of zombies falling from the sky…
Of cross-universal commandos who can see the future…
Of brothers separated by more years than either of them understands…
Of the murdered man (or is it executed), brought back to explain his death to aliens with no concept of linear time…
Of the man trapped in a cascading dream, desperately trying to make things right before new realities take him to even darker places.
And then, there’s the next three years of stolen moments, scribblings saved from the shredder of the broken brain. By writing them down, I’ve given them all a sort of permanence even though I don’t think about them all the time. The Brown Notebook did that for me. And assuming I ever get back to the present day, maybe it will be for us instead.
Fingers crossed.